IZ
IZ are beings made out of kurodine, a gel-like material that acts as artificial muscle, which surrounds a core made of aether. They consume natural aether from the ground and air to live, but die when their cores are exposed to aether-129, an isotope of aether that is created by charging aether with electric or thermal energy. Their bodies are mostly fluid, and they can propel themselves along the ground by rolling along it or pushing with their artificial muscle. They have been at war with humanity for nearly their entire history, and their tactics and weaponry are lifted from the humans, as if copying them. The IZ are an artificial life form put on Pyria by the sixth face of the five-faced god, Lunega, as a science experiment to find the natural predators of the IZ. Lunega believed that humans were that natural predator, but he would never be able to find out because he was locked into the Void as a punishment by the five other faces. There is also a natural race of IZ that live on the planet Sh'Vrani, where Nys comes from. The intelligence of the IZ comes from a general hivemind, although that doesn't describe their intelligence directly. Rather, it would be better to say that they have a collective unconscious that drives their efforts, even though all of them are technically individuals. The unconscious drives their actions, but they each have very small quirks. These quirks are blown up and combined with a human's personality when an IZ manages to create a Teki, although those are very rare. The IZ are not actually hostile to humans. They just want to communicate and gain new information, since that is what they were created to do in the first place. They are living information gatherers, and their collective unconscious is their databank that all can access. A similar system is in place on Sh'Vrani, although it is hundreds of times more advanced. The intelligence of a typical IZ is dependent on how extensive the collective databank is, so the IZ of Pyria are similar to cavemen, while the IZ of Sh'Vrani are slightly smarter than human beings. The main strength of the IZ is that they cannot be affected by weapons that are not doused in aether-129. Kurodine melts away under its influence, but otherwise it just scatters like water, and the IZ can bring it back into its body with ease. However, the core is always able to be affected, and a decent hit with any weapon will destroy a core. However, most IZ can freely move their cores around their bodies, so hitting the core reliably was a nightmare until the invention of the firearm and the aether-bullet. Types Arrow This is the artillery type of IZ, which stands at the back of the horde and fires projectiles over it to hit the humans on the other side. It arose sometime around the seventh emperor. Recently a new genus called the "Laser" has arisen, after humanity developed rocket artillery. Its entire purpose is to shoot down everything in the air, and it does it exceedingly well, leading to the dis-use of artillery in human strategems. Air force weaponry had to be developed to dodge the lasers that this type of IZ shot, and rather than the speedy planes of our world, the planes of XYN operate more like hummingbirds, darting in different directions to confuse the Laser type's lock-on. Corpse The Corpse type of IZ is the simplest, and yet one of the most effective. A Corpse type is not technically an IZ, but an IZ possessing a human corpse. Upon contact with human blood, the Corpse type can slip kurodine into the human, which reaches into the brain and gives the IZ hivemind control over that human. However, a Corpse type possessing a human only creates another Corpse type. It takes a Wisp taking control of a human directly to create a Teki. Corpses are typically put in front of all the other IZ to be run into the human forces as a wall of flesh, hoping that they turn a few more humans into Corpse types before they're all destroyed. They aren't smart enough to use weapons other than their bodies, and the humans are terrified of them, so they're more effectively used as a terror weapon than anything else. The exception is when a Corpse type is made from a Whiteblood, in which case the Corpse will gain limited intelligence and the ability to use any abilities that the Whiteblood had in life. This type of Corpse is so threatening that the army made a military designation especially for taking out turned Whitebloods. Shade The most dangerous type of IZ, this type has gained the ability to hide in the shadows and disguise itself, concealing itself just enough to slip behind the front lines and assassinate human commanders. To combat this type of IZ, the general practice of "sweeping" a combat area after the main battle has passed was established, to cleanse an area with fire to flush out any IZ in hiding. In addition, the religious leaders of the humans began to wear bright lights on their bodies when this type arose around the time of the eighth Emperor, saying that without shadows to hide in, the IZ could not hurt them. It didn't work, but the practice still stuck around, extending to the civilian population as well. The only evolution of the Shade type over time has been first the poisonous Shades, and then the sniper Shades who could kill from a distance. Shield This IZ was one of the first type of IZ to arise, coming about right around the time of the third Emperor, when humanity had organized itself to fight the IZ in large groups; enough to be called an army. In the beginning, this type of IZ hid behind the corpses as a second wave and trampled over whatever soldiers were left after fighting the first wave. They resembled giant brick walls at the time, and as time went on the Arrow types fired over them. After humanity developed mechanical infantry to fight the IZ as mobile weapons in the time of the ,the Shield type evolved into mobile shields to mimic them, acting as mobile shields to run straight into the vehicles like battering rams. As the humans developed ENDs to fight these battering rams, the Shield types dropped back to the back lines to defend against the artillery that humanity had created, to protect the Arrow and Laser types that still needed to fire. That's where they are now. Sword The Sword type was the second type of IZ to evolve, after the Wisp, and the first to fight humanity on any real terms. It evolved to face the threat of the "heroes" that the humans were sending against them. As such, it evolved to face the humans in direct combat mano-a-mano. Not long afterwards, around the time of the third emperor, when humans had formed armies, the Sword type reconfigured itself into a walking blender, picking up swords and flinging them in nearly random direction to cut humans all around it. It ran straight into any crowd of human it could find, and until humanity figured out how to make a bow, they were sitting ducks. After they did, the Sword type fell out of use until recently, when humanity evolved guns. Then the Sword type underwent a massive transformation into a more directed force. They still picked up weapons, in this case guns, but now they had complex sensory organs that allowed them to pinpoint trajectories and vectors to most effectively shoot as many humans as once. Thus, they regained the usefulness of the old days. Teki The Teki is a very special type of IZ, formed from the bonding of a Wisp and a human. Since Wisps are used for almost everything in IZ society, the odds are very low that a Teki will be formed in any specific battle, and so their numbers are always very small, only a dozen at best at any point in history. However, they are just as intelligent as a human, moreso with access to the collective databank of the IZ. However, access to this databank is manual for Teki instead of automatic, and they need to dip themselves into the huge pool of kurodine near the sixth Behemoth to access this databank. Teki have the personality of the human they possessed, along with a unique set of powers determined by the individual Wisp's 'quirk'. So, it's impossible to tell what set of powers will come from any given Teki. The Teki are technically incomplete fusions, as a portion of flesh where the IZ first touched them is converted into the Teki's core, known as their 'broken hole', named as such because the core makes the flesh warp into something similar to broken glass. The only successful fusion in human history was Gezakxen, created from Kazegen Zensatami. Since the "infection" was created through a human source of aether rather than a Wisp, there was no contact point, and Gezakxen is technically a new form of life rather than a Teki. However, he was so similar that the government decided to name him a Teki. More details can be found on Gezakxen's page. Giant The Giant only evolved recently from the IZ, and is believed to be the evolution of the Sword type. This form emerged not long after the emergence of Carrier types, but is so recent that they have only been seen during the reign of the current emperor, the twenty-eighth. Giants are similar in form to ENDs, and have similar mobility. They also have Laser-type IZ embedded into what could be called their "head", and it is their main form of weaponry, along with guns they pick up from the battlefield. To date, their usage has not been effective, and ENDs have been able to take them out relatively easily. However, it is now believed that the Giant type was a step in the path to the evolution of another type of IZ. This type has only been seen once, and it is simply gigantic, so large as to stand above the foot of a Behemoth. It has been classified as a "Titan", and although only one has been seen, it is believed that the Titan type is something that is very expensive for the IZ to create, simply in sheer amount of kurodine. The main weapon of a Titan is a condensed cloud of hundreds of Laser-types, which create a combined laser enough to take out an army on its own. The only Titan on record was taken out by the Praetorian, which destroyed it by CLASSIFIED. Wheel The Wheel type of IZ is perhaps the type that changed the most over the course of human history, but in small and subtle ways. At first, the Wheel type evolved simply to carry Wisps some time around the time of the first or second Emperor. They resembled horses in a way, and barreled through the human battle lines to try and reach the commanders. Right around the time of the eighth emperor, when humanity created a system of wagons to regularly bring reinforcements to the front lines, they copied them in a way. Now, the Wheel type took the form of a giant ball, which rolled towards the battle lines and burst upon contact with a sword or arrow. Then, the Wheel type would burst and hundreds of small Wisps would fall on the unlucky soldiers, as well as a few Sword types to decimate those still able to fight. Finally, right around the time that humanity created air-type ENDs, the IZ retooled the Wheel type, which had become obsolete with the introduction of the END to the battlefield, into a flying carrier that dropped other types onto the battlefield from far above. With a few Laser types making their home on the Wheel type, now called the Carrier type, it was more than enough to defend the Carrier from attack and make strategic attacks from above. The Carrier type is their current form. Wisp Wisp types are the very first type of IZ, and are believed to be the backbone of the IZ's evolution. They are blobs of kurodine with small cores in them, and they form the building blocks of IZ society, literally. It is believed that IZ living quarters are fashioned from Wisps, IZ transform into other types from Wisps, and Wisps form a large majority of the IZ not on the battlefield. They have immense potential to become nearly anything, and can form around objects to "possess" them, turning them into other types of IZ. They are also the only type of IZ that can create Teki, because other IZ have already "become" other objects. Otherwise they are little threat, and can be taken out with a single aether-bullet. = Site Navigation Category:XYN Category:Race